I’m always surprised by the superficial resemblances between lichens and sea corals. If I didn’t know these were lichens and just glanced, they look for all the world like certain colonies of coral seen in the Caribbean. The same is true with flowers – the anemones blow in the wind, while the sea anemones blow in the currents of the sea.

I’ve never understood why they are so much under-the-radar. Many are very bright colored. Perhaps because they don’t represent a lot of bulk. Perhaps I’ve become more conscious of them when I found that some species grow only a few centimeters in a century and there are colonies of the Green Map species in the Canadian Arctic that are estimated to be many thousands of years old. I certainly don’t want a misplaced boot to destroy an organism of that age!

Those are excellent shots of lichens. Great minds must think alike-I just wrote two posts about lichens that will appear in the near future. It’s funny how lichens are so easy to overlook (or ignore)until you start really looking for them. Then you find that they are everywhere and you wonder how you could have possibly missed them.

Excellent lichen photographs—and with scientific names, too. I’m fascinated by lichens and photograph them when I get a good view, but I’ve never tracked down any of their names; maybe I’ll have to start trying.

You would love wandering around here, Ratty. There are lichens literally everywhere. We have a large rock wall and rock flower bed at our house and we were careful to put the rocks with lichens on them at the top where they wouldn’t be disturbed.

I’m not amazed that you thought to take photographs of these lovelies, but impressed with the casual way you toss off their secientific names. Are lichens easier to ID than other plants and animals, or are you just good at it or trained on the subject?

No, I’m not trained on them, but I have a pretty good book of plants in this general area and it has great photos and descriptions. There is also a section on lichens in the Burke Museum website. I do the best I can, but I’m certainly not 100% accurate!

[…] I think lichens are highly under-represented in the annals of popular natural history, but having said that I’ve seen some superb posts from fellow natural history bloggers in the recent past, most notably from ‘btweenblinks‘ and ‘Montana Outdoors‘ […]

What is really apparent from reading these comments, is that most people barely even notice lichens, but once they become aware of them, they look for lichens wherever they go. Thanks to great photos like yours, more people are able to enjoy the absolute beauty of lichens.